


The Journey, Not the Destination

by Azzandra



Series: Where the Roads Converge [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Fluff, Found Family, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 17:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6249760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danse settles in as the newest member of the Atom Cats. There are growing pains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Journey, Not the Destination

**Author's Note:**

> Technically this is a sequel to [Where the Roads Converge](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5321387), but you don't need to read that to understand this, and that fic deals more with Danse's life in between the BoS going bye-bye and Danse meeting the Atom Cats, if you're into redemption-type stories.
> 
> This one's just fluff.

There was something enrapturing about the way Rowdy held an airbrush. There was a skill there that Danse could not replicate, in the way her fingers, with only the slightest twitch, could trace outlines of flames with perfection.

In the Brotherhood, armor had always been marked with stencils; the Brotherhood insignia, numbers, letters. There were guidelines to follow, and no room for creative interpretation.

But the Atom Cats did theirs freehand, tracing fanciful patterns of whatever felt right: frequently flames, which were an odd motif for a group which associated themselves most strongly with the concept of 'coolness', but Danse did not think it was his job to comment on the thematic consistency of the group. 

Danse was never going to get it. The airbrush felt awkward in his hand, and the shapes he made on the piece of cardboard he'd been given for practice did not quite turn out exactly right.

"Hey, now, don't let it rattle your cage," Zeke said, patting Danse's back. "Rowdy's unreal with an airbrush, she leaves _all_ of us in the dust."

  
_Yes, but_ \--

Danse swallowed back the words, and nodded at Zeke, flipping the cardboard over and beginning to practice again on the other side.

But he felt as if he was falling behind, regardless; falling deeper into some kind of debt with every kindness they showed him.

 

* * *

 

When Zeke asked him what his power armor of choice was, Danse had replied,

"T-60s were the Brotherhood standard."

The leader of the Atom Cats nodded, and rapped his knuckles on the power armor frame.

"We'll make yours an X-01, then. Cherry ride, if I do say so myself," Zeke had declared, waggling his eyebrows of the frame of his sunglasses.

And Danse couldn't help the tingle of excitement, because he'd _always wanted to try out an X-01_ \--

But--

"I'm only a newcomer," Danse said, frowning. "Surely someone else is entitled to an X-01 before me."

"Whoa, whoa, there, Jack, the Atom Cats ain't about entitlement," Zeke had said. "If we want to give the guy who saved Duke's bacon a sweet rig to match his classy chassis, we're gonna do it, and there ain't no man saying we can't."

Danse frowned as he followed the string of Zeke's lingo.

"By saved Duke's bacon, you mean that I helped him in that fight," Danse said.

"Uh-huh."

"And a sweet rig is, I am assuming, another expression for a good set of power armor."

"The best kind," Zeke confirmed patiently.

Danse's brows twisted in confusion.

"What's a 'classy chassis', then?" he asked.

Zeke laughed, and gave Danse's buttocks a few friendly pats.

"That's your banging bod there, buddy," Zeke said with a laugh, and then clarified, "It's a compliment."

Danse felt a blush creep up to his ears.

"...Oh," he said. "...Thank you."

 

* * *

 

The day Danse loped into the Atom Cats garage, it was while holding Duke's battered body and wearing Duke's own power armor.

It had been the expedient solution, as Danse saw it. Duke was injured, disorientated from blood loss, and too weak to operate it. Danse had pulled Duke out of the power armor to inject him with a couple of stimpaks, but seeing the extent of his injuries, there was no way Danse was going to stuff the man back into the suit.

So Danse gritted his teeth against the pain of his own injuries, climbed into the suit, and carried Duke away from the battlefield before more enemies could arrive. Duke was pale and wheezing, but still aware enough to point Danse to his home base.

And Danse had fully expected some amount of apprehension as he arrived at the garage. He was wearing power armor that was not his, and carrying the bloodied body of its owner. If the recriminations did not come right away, perhaps that was because everyone was rushing to help Duke.

As the group swarmed around in concern, Danse was herded towards the nearest bed, and they had him place Duke on it. Then there was a different, more organized type of swarming; the controlled chaos of the infirmary, as Danse learned to recognize it. First aid kits were taken out, drugs were measures out, bandages were unraveled, needles and thread for sewing--Danse retreated out of the way, let them work on their friend.

He ended up in the garage's yard, pacing in the power armor, cataloguing all the tiny differences from his own suit that marked the preferences of a different owner: the knee joints stiffer, the elbow joints looser; the way the gyros were calibrated for someone whose center of balance was just a bit off from his; the places where the plating was tighter.

But it was still so familiar and reassuring to be suited up once again, that it did not even occur to Danse how inappropriate this was until he was approached by Zeke.

"What happened out there, man?" Zeke asked, distress across his brow.

"There were raiders," Danse said. "He was outnumbered, possibly eight or nine to one. The fight had been going on for some time when I arrived."

Danse fell back on the familiarity of delivering a report. Zeke listened, his brows rising with each word, but did not interrupt until Danse was finished speaking.

Then Zeke let out a low whistle, a reaction which Paladin Danse had to admit no report of his had ever elicited until then.

"You alright there, Jack?" Zeke asked.

"Yes," Danse replied. "I am... largely intact. I-- oh. Oh, I should get out of his power armor."

He hit the release with a flinch of panic, and when the suit let him out, he stumbled and nearly fell over. Zeke took a step towards him as if to catch him, but Danse straightened up right away, with military composure.

There was an alarming throb of pain in his side, and across his back. He'd been shot in the ribs, and in the rush of adrenaline, had not noticed how bad the injury truly was. The suit had been applying pressure on his injury, but with that pressure gone, it had begun bleeding again.

"Uh, you sure you're alright there, Daddy-o?" Zeke asked again.

"I am--" Danse said, as dark spots began dancing at the edges of his vision, "--completely fine."

This time when he began tilting forward, Zeke actually did catch him.

Danse woke up again in a bed across from Duke. And Duke, still weak enough from blood loss that his arms trembled a bit, raised his hands up to give Danse two thumbs up.

 

* * *

 

Roxy had been the newcomer to the group before Danse, yet she held herself with confidence. Her jacket was a touch too large for her, hanging loose around her shoulders, but she wore it proudly regardless.

During his first few days, Roxy was the one showing him around, explaining the habits and routines of the group. He followed her around the garage grounds, he listened to her tell him about the Atom Cats' history, and he wondered if he was supposed to be taking notes or memorizing any of it.

"Nah," Roxy had replied, grinning. "There's no test, Big Cat. Except on this."

And then she gave him a flat pebble and taught him how to skip it across the water. Which Danse found curious, and became quite good at with practice. It was only much later, when no test on this skill ever came, that he realized Roxy had only been joking about that part.

Other than that, she also took him along when she went to trade for food with the Warwick Homestead, and she sometimes paired up with him when the Atom Cats went on mirelurk culling patrol--a necessary chore living this close to the water.

Then, one day, after his bed had been set up in its own little cranny, Danse found Roxy's jacket, folded on the bed as if waiting for him.

He picked it up and found her, scribbling out verses behind the garage on the margins of a filthy old trade magazine, practicing for Poetry Night.

"This is yours," Danse said, handing her the jacket.

Roxy popped her gum before replying.

"Nah, it's yours now, Big Cat," she said.

Danse looked down at the jacket, confused, and then back up at Roxy.

"I can't possibly accept this. You told me you only just received it."

"That means it's mine to give, doesn't it?" Roxy grinned. "Go on, Big Cat, put it on. You need it more than I do."

And that... was an uncomfortably astute remark on Roxy's part, because even Danse knew that she was right. Some part of him still craved the uniform, still remembered the sense of belonging it had given him.

"...thank you," Danse said.

Roxy nodded at him, and then went back to scribbling her verses.

In the privacy of his makeshift bedroom, Danse pulled the jacket on. Where it had been too loose on Roxy, it was perfectly snug on him. Not quite a typical uniform, but there was a sense of comfort in it; he belonged again.

 

* * *

 

When Bluejay smoked, he always exhaled plumes of smoke slowly and deliberately, like one of the sultry dames from old pre-war movies.

"So you want to know about poetry," Bluejay said.

"I would like to know the point of this exercise, yes," Danse said.

"An exercise of the soul," Bluejay nodded, "the distillation of coolness into words through cadence."

Danse could already see Bluejay was in a _mood_. Perhaps considering how much Bluejay enjoyed Poetry Night, he was not the person to ask about this, but Danse persisted nonetheless.

"I would like to know if participation is mandatory," Danse said.

"Nah, there ain't no forcing it," Bluejay replied. "You gotta _feel_ it, you know? And then let it out."

Danse went to ask Rowdy after that.

"Nah, you don't have to," Rowdy said, in between hammering out the dents in a piece of armor.

There was a 'but' hanging untold at the end of that sentence, however, so Danse waited.

"It's just, you know. Fun. Meant to be fun," Rowdy continued, looking a touch nervous. "Everyone's so talented, though. I always get embarrassed and skid outta there."

"Oh," Danse said. "If it's any comfort, I... don't have any artistic inclinations. I am unlikely to make a good showing."

Rowdy laughed, but straightened up a bit.

"Well, there you go," she said. "The two Atom Cats who can't recite for crap."

Danse's eyebrows rose.

" _That_ sounded somewhat poetic," he said, "vulgarity notwithstanding."

Rowdy turned to look at him, surprised.

"Yeah," she said slowly. "Yeah, guess you're right." She cracked a smile at Danse. "Maybe I'll even get that down on holotape one day."

 

* * *

 

When Johnny D. offered Danse the beer, he took it reflexively, and then stared at it for a moment before realizing what it was.

"Got yourself some deep thinking to do, huh?" Johnny D. asked, as he sprawled in the patio chair across from Danse, and took a gulp of his own beer.

"Yes. No! It's... I'm not sure," Danse said. "It's not deep. Do you know any embroidery?"

"Nope," Johnny D. replied. "Zeke's a demon with a needle, though. Might want to hit him up for lessons. If you ask me, though?"

Johnny D. paused and Danse nodded.

"Sewing on a leather patch is easier than embroidering one yourself," Johnny D. continued. "And Roxy'd like a leather patch just fine, as long as the jacket fit."

Danse flinched, not expecting an answer so accurate to his concerns.

Johnny D. continued drinking his beer, peering off into the horizon at the sunset, looking perfectly at peace with the world. His jacket, other than the Atom Cats logo on the back, was riddled with many other patches. There seemed to be a progression of refinement, the oldest looking more rough and simple, and the newest more intricate and well-made.

After a while, Danse hesitantly asked,

"How do I make a leather patch?"

A smile began spreading across Johnny D.'s face as he began talking.


End file.
